Without wishing to sound in any way pretentious or hi-brow (read: what follows will be exceptionallly pretentious and hi-brow) one simply loves an art gallery. This one does anyway.

The works of the great masters; the magical skills of the artists; wonderful landscapes; fabulous potraits; naked fat birds romping round with cherubs; rooms full of Jesus and Marys with suitable haloes… ahhhhh. You can keep it all. Its bollocks, the lot of it. Constable painted the countryside with startling accuracy but my phone can provide a perfect image down to the millionth mega-pixel, so who needs him? Reubens thinks he invented porn and the entire Renaissance was a waste of time unless you’re a Catholic.

Yet I love a gallery. But the galleries themselves, the buildings. I’ve been to loads, all over the world. The Louvre is fabulous, I adore that pyramid, the Prado in Madrid, couple in Barcelona, the Getty in California, the Guggenheim in New York, I simply love them all. From the outside. I love the buildings, the grounds, the structures, the everything. The Musee d’Orsay is a recycled tram shed, the Tate Modern a depot of some sort and they are amazing buildings. Generally filled with stuff I really don’t want to see.

So I generally do galleries from the outside, only venturing in if there’s a particular exhibition that appeals; pop art or extreme expressionism verging on surreal, or if there’s a really good restaurant run by a burger chain.

I love art galleries; its the art that spoils them.

I went once to the Tate Britain; fabulous old ex-prison sitting on the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge. Rachie was doing a project on Toulouse La Trec and we ‘needed’ to go. We spent more time in the cafe than the gallery, coffee was sensational, fab cakes. And now they’ve redone the place. Internally. 45 million quids worth of ‘make-over’ and the interior now (looking at the pictures) looks so fantastic that I actually want to go.

I wonder if they’d take down all the paintings so I can have a proper, undistracted look.

England play Germany tonight in the World Cup qualifier of massive importance. Both in terms of football and in terms of national pride. Because whatever happens in the world of politics, in Europe, however nice anyone tries to be, whatever measures of friendliness between our two fine nations occur, I think it safe to say: WE FUCKING HATE THE GERMANS. Its irrational, its illogical, its not very nice and (apparently) they are our friends, neighbours and allies. Apparently.
But in football; WE HATE THEM. Maybe we always hate them and are only allowed to give vent to this in the footballing arena.
So even though international football generally depresses me and leaves me totally cold, tonight its a big COME ON ENGLAND.

glücklich Dienstag

A xxxx